10/31/13

Dharma Talk, October 21, 2013: Stan's Questions

Good
evening to you all. We’re going to continue delving in to the early roots of Mahayana practice and the
idea of development of a bodhisattva and also the development of concepts of
emptiness as it relates to the Mahayana practice. Before the class, Stan had a
question. He was reading from this quarter issue of the Chan Magazine. I’d like
him to go ahead and start on what he was saying.

Student:
This most recent Chan
Magazine Autumn 2013 has an article by Master Sheng Yen. It was a
Dharma talk he gave after 9/11 on Life and Death. At the end of his talk, he
answered a question: “I had been trying to understand for sometime about
reincarnation. If there was no self, then what in fact is reincarnated from
lifetime to lifetime?”

Master Sheng Yen answered,
“It is important that we do not misunderstand this notion that there is no
self. In the practice, what we try to do is to be liberated from the self of vexation,
the self of suffering, the self of emotional afflictions. However, there is the
self of wisdom and compassion, this vow of great compassion, that’s there. If
even the self of wisdom or self of great compassion is not there, then there’s
not even any Buddha.”

My question
was, “What is the self of wisdom and compassion?”

Gilbert:
What we’re going to talk about today cannot be said with words - the true
self-nature of mind. In this idea of the self-nature of mind, it’s the mind
that realizes emptiness of all things, all dharmas. This idea of emptiness is
utilized via the wisdom of a bodhisattva through the power of the vows of a
bodhisattva, but through the understanding that there is no separation between
one dharma and another dharma, one thought and another thought, your thought
and my thought, this situation and another situation, this point in time and
another point in time. All of those things are conceptual manifestations that
appear in mind but are not separate from mind. They are in mind but they
themselves are not an individual droplet of water in the ocean of mind. They
represent in itself the totality of mind as it’s not separate. All those things
are empty.

When we
talk about emptiness, we don’t talk about emptiness in a way in which we say
things are empty. Maybe we need to create a different term for that especially
in Western thinking because when we start thinking about emptiness, we start
thinking about there’s just this space, and really, space is caused from
discrimination, not from emptiness. Space is caused from the appearance of
concepts that then created space between that concept and another concept. That
space wasn’t there before but when we look at things there, that’s all
connected and it begins to make sense. But we should not look at things from
the idea of this emptiness as this great void, like looking out into space and
looking for where the stars are not. There is no separation at all there.

This is
something that I’m going to take with me and do my lecture at the University of
Michigan on Friday night. The topic is “Bodhisattvas Delivering Sentient beings
Without Delivering Any Sentient Being.” It is the same thing that Master Sheng
Yen was talking about – this idea of the power of this vow, and the idea that
we do not look at things from the idea of the self as to the conceptual self,
but the self-nature of mind – how mind works, how wisdom is utilized and we
have this faith in mind to see how it’s operating. By that utilization of
wisdom, mind becomes clarified. Becoming clarified, the True Nature is
revealed. We cannot say that it is seen because then it becomes dualistic. It
just becomes something that becomes clear to us in terms of how we see things.

In this
way, it transforms the actions of an individual to the actions of a bodhisattva
carrying out the functions that are necessary in any given point. In this
transformation, we see these things as “Okay, there isn’t this real extension
of a human being that now dies and either becomes a pig, a ghost, a
heaven-dweller, or Asura. We see it
as a continuum without there being a continuum. And the reason that a
bodhisattva can deliver innumerable sentient beings is the fundamental
emptiness of all things that all things are judged by that.

So we’re
going to go into that and that might help you in terms of how one can save a
sentient being without saving sentient beings – sentient beings being any
entity that thinks. It could be a ghost that thinks, an animal that thinks, a
human being that thinks, or heaven-dweller that thinks. These sentient beings
are seen as part of emptiness and as a result of that, it enables the
Bodhisattvas to carry out their vows of delivering those sentient beings,
clearly understanding that deliverance is already within the mind itself.

Based on
what you were saying, I’m going to jump to Red Pine’s version of the Heart Sutra which is a very
excellent version. This is very interesting because you have to read it over
and over again. Right now, I’m studying a book about the history of Chan
Buddhism and it’s taken me three days to go about four pages. Each time I read
it, I read it over again and again and try to absorb what is there and try to
feel it from the heart. There is no need for me to turn the page till I’ve
really pulled from those pages the essence of what is being communicated by the
author, and also not what the author wanted to do but beyond what the author is
presenting – something more than an invitation to investigate.

This
investigation has taken me some time but it’s okay. It is what Master Sheng Yen
was saying about meditation as eating a stalk of sugar cane. When you eat a
stalk of sugar cane, on the outside it’s rough and very fibrous but as one gets
closer to the center, it becomes very sweet and tender and easier to digest and
very enjoyable. This is not so much as enjoyable but palatable to me to be able
to keep working on it. As I work on it, it becomes easier and easier to
penetrate it.

In this
way, one should look at what Red Pine is offering from the Heart Sutra so that
one is taking what he is extending there - the different quotations from
different masters, and not taking these quotations as much as an invitation to
use your heart to look into them. This particular part in Part 2 is entitled “Abhidharma
in the Light of the Prajnaparamita.”
The term Abhidharma means “the
highest of the teachings.” This light of Prajnaparamita is the
perfected deep wisdom or you can even say Mahaprajnaparamita,
this very perfected wisdom.

Going back
to this highest teaching, keep in mind in the Heart Sutra, Avalokitesvara is
addressing Sariputra, who is a proponent of the Theravada Abhidharma, which was
the school that says that everything was real. But Avalokitesvara,
the Kuanyin Bodhisattva was saying that everything is empty. If one sees this
clearly, there’s no place for one can say there is absolute reality there.

By looking at it in this
way, it’s transforming the Abhidharma.
In the Abhidharma, there is this nice
jewel there. But looking at it deeper, it’s main proponent, Vasavandu(?)became a Mahayana practitioner because he looked deeper into the Abhidharma
and saw what Red Pine says here – the Abhidharma
in the Light of the Prajnaparamita,
and realized that there’s a little bit more there. So this part of the Heart
Sutra verse goes this way:

“Therefore, Sariputra, in emptiness
there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no memory and no consciousness.”

Red Pine commentary read
as follows:

“Having introduced Shariputra to the Prajnaparamita, Avalokitesvara now
reviews the major categories of the Sarvastivadin
Abhidharma in its light, which is the light of emptiness. Thus the focus
here is “in emptiness” (shunyatayan),
where shunyata is in the locative
case. In the light of convention, objects are real.

So in our everyday life as
we look around, we see things as objects; they are real like the water bottle,
but come back after class and it will be an empty water bottle. Look at it now
and it’s still an empty water bottle. So when we look at it, we see these
things as real.

In the light of meditation, objects are
not real, but dharmas (phenomena) are. In the light of wisdom, objects and
dharmas are not real, nor are they not real.

So they’re neither real
nor not not-real. Probably the correct language of saying it is his way to
avoid confusing anymore than it is; neither real nor not not real, meaning that
we don’t see it in the way that there is any convention to it or any
conceptualization. What school is this that we’re talking about now?

Student: Madhyamaca School.

Gilbert: Madhyamaca, the Middle Way. So it’s not
real or not real, and it’s not in the middle.

They are not real, because they are
empty of self existence.

The water bottle here
hasn’t been a water bottle for very long nor will it be for very long. It may
be a part on a car later on, constantly changing this plastic. We never say
that this water bottle in its next lifetime will be a water bottle; it could
be, but it could also be part of a toy. Does that change its reality from what
it is? You see, everything changes in this way so how can we say this one
person is reborn? It’s all causes and conditions but it’s all part of what’s
happening that causes and conditions produce certain appearances and those
appearances are transitory – constantly changing.

Student: So when it comes
to reincarnation, is it like a water bottle has to become one other thing? Or
is it like there’s a stream where there’s an eddy and there’s an energy to the
eddy but then that energy goes somewhere? It doesn’t have to be one eddy or one
collection of anything.

Gilbert: In order for it
to work, it can never be a thing. It doesn’t have a self-nature or a self
existence. It is a part of mind itself and that is why Bodhisattvas can save
sentient beings, without saving sentient beings. There’s no self-existence to
it so it follows in accordance with causes and conditions. Continuing:

But neither are they not real, because
they are empty of non-existence.

There’s this little twist
here; they are empty of non-existence. But keep in mind, we’re talking about
empty not the same way as you are used to using empty. It’s a little different.
You’ve got to push the envelope here - empty of non-existence. What does that
mean? So it’s not real, it’s not not real. What is it? It can’t be named. Name
is a convention. So leave it alone. Continuing:

Emptiness is what makes everything real.

What are we talking about
when we say emptiness is what makes everything real? It’s the self-nature of
the mind.

Self-existence and non-existence are
what make everything false.

Why, because they are
conventions; they are conceptions. When we say it in that way, it can’t be in
that way. They are looking at it in a mathematical formula saying that these
two things don’t add up; they don’t work. When we try to do it, we’re talking
about dualism; it’s not that way. It’s not that this reality is with me and
extends on beyond my hand and there is where emptiness starts until it reaches
Sentha, and then it starts up again. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not that
kind of emptiness. It’s not the emptiness between two objects; it’s the
emptiness of all dharmas. (When we use this term dharma, [little d]
means phenomenal occurrences.) The dharma could be a book, or it could be a
thought in your mind.

When we establish a dharma that either
exists or does not exist, we create a separation in time, in space and in our
minds.

It wasn’t there but all of
a sunned, there’s this illusory separation there. Is that illusion real?

Student: It is real, not
real, neither real nor not real, and both real and not real.

Gilbert: Too many reals…
(laughs…) It reminds me of a part of a Chan liturgy at a retreat – “to know all
the Buddhas of the past, present and future perceive that all dharmadatu nature
is all created by the mind.” That’s what they’re talking about here that when
we establish a dharma that either exists or does not exist. We create
separation in time, in space and in our minds. So is that real or nor real?
It’s a trap because if we say it’s not real or it’s an illusion, then we’re
banking on non-existence. But if we say it’s real, then all of the schools will
attack you and refute what you were saying.

Emptiness is not space, but the absence of space.

(I wish I could show in
audio about the group’s quizzical deer-in-the headlight that we have here. This
is good stuff.)

Student: (inaudible…)

Gilbert: The thing is,
here you see the difference – we’re working on it. We’re just not reading these
words. The mind has a funny thing - it glosses over what it doesn’t understand.
So we have got to retrain our mind to when we doesn’t understand something, you
stop! You don’t go forward until you see what this means. Because how can you
build any foundation for the future without understanding what you just read?
So you have to look at it in this way. We have not gone very far. Red Pine had
barely started here and you’re already going, you know “what the heck?” So
let’s go back and see.

He said that emptiness is
not space but the absence of space.

Student: I don’t agree
with it - emptiness is not space. It’s the immutability and indivisibility of
all things. It’s the impermanence and the interconnection between all things,
that nothing is separate, nothing is permanent. It’s a quality; it doesn’t
necessarily have anything to do with space.

Gilbert: And isn’t that
the absence of space?

Student: It doesn’t have
anything to do with space. That’s not the same as the absence of space.

Another student: I think
the difference from Zen in how you identify space as something between two
objects, then it separates objects. And it can’t be because we’re all connected
to the one self.

Gilbert: In that way it
is. Emptiness is not the space that they want to accentuate here. It’s not the
space in between that all of a sudden you pick up but it’s this idea that
there’s this absence of space, that this so-called space in between you and I
is not separate. What we’re calling as conventional emptiness or voidness is
not separate from your appearance of a corporal body, which is appearing real
and not real. We don’t deny that it’s there but we do not perceive it to be an
individual self existence. It is there appearing in mind in accordance with
causes and conditions.

Student: But doesn’t that
make Sentha’s definition? To me, it’s clear. That’s kind of what she just said,
right?

Gilbert: You’re right!

Student: Cool. It’s
something within.

Gilbert: Neither going in
nor going out. We continue:

Dharmas represent the creation of
space, the conjuring of division into our awareness.

So it’s dividing. All of a sudden, Matt and I
aren’t on the same page anymore. He’s there looking at me and I’m there looking
at him and we deny that we’re relatives because phenomena does that; it creates
that space there – conjuring and changing things. If we say Matt exists and I
exist, then we have space. Comeback in a hundred years and see if any of us is
still around, and if either one of us is moving, run! Continuing:

Emptiness represents the removal of
space or division. Thus, where there is emptiness, which is everywhere, there
are no dharmas. Dharmas as self-existent or non-existent entities are fictions.
Dharmas as emptiness are…

What, anybody? Think about
it.

Students: Space, fiction,
impermanence, phenomena.

Gilbert: … are real.

Student: Can you read it
again?

Gilbert: Let’s read it
again; this is how we approach things. Don’t gloss over them because you’ll
miss it when you do that. I’m teaching you how to read this. This is just Red
Pine’s commentary; this is not even the Heart Sutra. You missed it on your
first take with the Heart Sutra, or the first few hundred takes, and now we’re
looking at it here. But this is good stuff.

So he’s saying here that dharmas
as self-existent or non-existent entities are fictions. So when dharmas (he’s
saying) is real or not real (The Abhidharma
says everything is real, but Avalokitesvara
says, “I don’t think so!”), it’s only real when it’s seen as emptiness. And why
is it real when it’s seen as emptiness?

Student: Emptiness is the
true characteristics of all dharmas; the true unchanging characteristic of all
dharmas.

Gilbert: It is the
self-nature of mind, correct. And as that way, it’s real. Why, because it’s
empty, and therein lie the evolution of Buddhist philosophy from Theravada
where one is delivering to Nirvana to the idea of emptiness, the idea of
emptiness coming in, the idea of Mahaprajnaparamita,
of seeing clearly the emptiness, seeing Paticca-Samuppada-
causes and conditions, the causal links; all of that springs forth from
this. It’s like we’re scraping off some missing links here and pushing off the
dusts, and all of a sudden going “Ahh!” That’s what Chan is - as we
fast-forward 700 years and we got Hue-neng and him saying “Without thinking of
good or bad, what mind is that?” It’s the mind evolving from the Mahasamghikas into the Madhyamaca school and from there on. You
see, this is the connection.

So when we say “That’s a
cool thing that Hue-neng said,” what does that mean? And we go “I don’t know
but it sounded cool,” then we really don’t understand it. So we go back, we’re
taking you to primary school here. What is the primary meaning of mind, anybody
remember?

Student: Mind.

Gilbert: The primary
meaning of mind is mind. We’re not going to get anywhere close to where I
wanted to be at the beginning of the class but this is how it is. When you’re
studying, this is the way you study. Don’t dare turn that page till you
understand what’s on that page. Don’t dare go to the next paragraph till you
understand that paragraph, or the next line, or the next word. It’s like doing
the walking meditation in a circle and someone is so anxious to push the person
in front of him. What for? Where are they going? Likewise here, there is no
finish line, no Chariots of Fire moments where you lean in slow motion and
cross the line with fireworks going on. You just keep the pace.

Thus, the separation of dharmas from
emptiness is impossible. Dharmas cannot be separated from emptiness. They are
not outside emptiness, and they are not inside emptiness.

When we talk about
consciousness being part of mind, we see it as phenomenally there but we do not
see it in such that is inside of mind but rather than just mind itself. Just
like each individual sitting in this room is mind itself.

They are emptiness. The same holds for
emptiness. It is not outside dharmas and not inside them.

Now he’s switching it.
He’s flipping it saying that this emptiness is the same way – it’s not a
separate entity apart from all dharmas. It’s not separate from it.

Student: I’m wondering if
there is anybody other than Red Pine that thinks like this. He’s making
emptiness into a spatial entity. He’s talking about it as if it is a thing –
spatial. But he’s saying it is the absence of space, it is not inside or
outside; why is he talking about emptiness as though it’s a thing?

Gilbert: You’re missing
it; you’re looking at it so you’re a bit off on this idea of what we’re saying
before - the absence of space. That’s where he’s at. He’s saying that emptiness
is not space, it’s the absence of space. He’s saying the opposite of what
you’re saying – that everything is all connected. There is no space in between
so we cannot say it is inside, outside, or anywhere.

Student: I see where he’s
going but he’s made it into something about space. There’s a quality in the way
he’s describing it in connection to space. Just wondering why he’s talking
about emptiness in connection to space.

Gilbert: He’s using it as
an analogy because especially in the Western mind, we’re so much confused about
this idea of emptiness, this void, like in Star Trek going into this vast
beyond like there’s nothing there. And quite to the contrary, there’s nothing
there but it’s only because it’s emptiness itself; not spatially but because
it’s defined in this way. And to his credit, we haven’t gotten there, but
there’s a whole line of masters to quote here just to back him up and they’re
right too. (laughs…) Continuing…

Neither dharmas nor emptiness can fit
inside another. They are co-extensive. This is true of form and also true of
sensation, perception, memory, and consciousness. They do not exist in
emptiness; they are one with emptiness. (This
is the pay-off part.)And emptiness is one with them, with
each other, and with all of them. Emptiness is not just their common
denominator, it is their only denominator.

What is the primary
meaning of mind? Mind is the primary meaning of mind. It is the only
denominator so where is there any space in between?

Dharmas are defined by emptiness alone,
not by permanence or impermanence, not by purity or impurity, not by the
presence or the absence of a self. Emptiness is their real nature.

It’s the self-nature of mind; that goes back
to what master Sheng Yen was saying. He was pointing in his commentary as to
the reincarnation of it is the self-nature of mind. And that is what one uses.
The problem is that we begin to think that consciousness is the denominator.
But it’s not; it is not separate from it. So when we look at things in this
way, it changes.

I’ve told you the story
before about one monk. He was the abbot of the monastery and as he was traveling
in the forest, he saw a very sickly fox. The fox hailed the monk over and the
monk was very quizzical. He said, “How was it possible for you to be able to
speak in a human language?”

The fox said, “Once I was
a monk just like you and I was asked a question. I answered “Yes.” And for my
erroneous answer, I was reborn as a fox for many many lifetimes. Is it possible
for you to help me to clarify this?”

The monk said, “What is
the question?”

The fox said the question
was, “Once one become enlightened, are they free from karmic obstructions and
karmic phenomena?”

When the monk heard this,
he said, “The Buddha, being mind, is at one with causes and conditions. No one
is free from karmic obstructions and karmic phenomena.” Just like what we’re
taking here it is one with emptiness; it’s the same thing. So when you see
things in this way, it helps you clarify but it makes all the difference in the
world.

Ultimately, the abbot went
back to the monastery then he went back to the forest with other monks and gave
the fox the proper burial fit for a human being.

This last one is a
commentary from a Buddhist scholar:

Conze says: “Everything that is at all
worth knowing is contained in the Hridaya.(Hridaya - the
heart; this is very similar to the heart-mind that the Chinese Buddhists use)But it can be found there only if spiritual insight is
married to intellectual ability, and coupled with the delight use of the
intellect.

Here I would change this a
little bit to not say intellectual ability but to say wisdom. And I wouldn’t
say coupled with the delight as much as the function of using the wisdom.

This Sutra, it is true, points to
something that lies far beyond the intellect. But the way to get to that is to
follow the intellect as far as it will take you.

That is the Chan analogy
of the finger pointing at the moon - that one follows it to the finger tip.

And the dialectic logic of this Sutra
enables the intellect, working through language, to carry the understanding a
stage further than the conceptual thinking based on ordinary logic can do.”

That is the point – that one
has to go beyond ordinary logic. We have to go beyond “I think, therefore I am”
because “I think, therefore I am” does not get us to “How in the heck did I
think in the first place? Or where did that thought go? Or where did that
thought come from?” None of that is addressed in that intellectual approach to
it. But if we go beyond that, if we go, “What is this mind?” And just keep
asking yourself that everyday “What is mind?” Don’t expect an answer because it
would be nonsensical.

But one day, there’s going
to be a realization there that has nothing to do with intellectual reasoning.
It will be a reflection of the self-nature and it will be clear. And the funny
thing about it is you’ll be knocking yourself on the side of the head saying
“How come I didn’t get this? This is so clear.” Like Baizhang said, “It was only until today that I notice that my
nostrils pointed downwards.”

I’m going to leave you
there. I might pick up again with some of the other ones but you’ve got some
idea of what we’re talking about. Did that help you with some of your
questions, Stan? Yes?